MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
LOS ANGELES – Imagine waking up Christmas morning, exchanging gifts with the family, having a midday brunch and then gathering around the television to watch ... Game 6 of the World Series?
What seems absurd to many makes perfect sense to agent Scott Boras, who has used the downtime caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to brainstorm ideas for how baseball can maintain the integrity of its traditional 162-game schedule and fourtiered playoff system despite a lengthy delay to the start of the season.
“When you’re in jail and you can’t go anywhere,” Boras said, alluding to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s order that Californians stay at home to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, “these kinds of things are nice projects to work on, right?”
There is a growing sense among baseball executives that a best-case scenario for the sport would be an 81-game regular season beginning around July 1 and a postseason in October. There is also a fear among some that the 2020 season might be canceled in its entirety.
Boras is more optimistic. He believes a June start is “well within the vision of what could be,” and said he has submitted proposals to Major League Baseball for a 162-game season that would begin June 1 and a 144-game season that would start July 1.
Both feature a playoff schedule that would run Dec. 3-26, complete with wild-card games, five-game division series, sevengame championship series and a seven-game World Series. Postseason games would be played
seniors … We haven’t had any closure. We’re still holding out hope that we will be able to play sometime in the spring.”
While everyone is disappointed, Peterson said the team and school are in agreement with the reasoning behind the stay-at-home order and temporary cancelation of spring sports. a tear to begin its run at a four-peat in division IV before everything came to a screeching halt amid COVID-19.
“This is a really special team,” said head coach Stefanie Danna. “We started out 10-0 and hit 18 homers on the season.”
Now it’s all about remaining in contact with each other via the group text message chat that Danna helped set up to stay in contact with her athletes.
“We’re talking to them about staying in shape, hitting and throwing,” Danna said.
Danna said she even gets a few videos sent to her from time to time.
“They will send a video here or there of them throwing or taking ground balls,” Danna said.
Danna said she’s also checking in to see where her team is emotionally because for her seniors the latter half of the year is filled with milestones like championships, prom, graduation. The 2020 class hopes to celebrate in person these cherished high school memories.
“In their minds they’re ready for April 20 so they can go back to work as a group,” Danna said.